Dan Hall: No petting’ rule won’t save endangered elephants

Friday

You may have heard this tale before: Long ago, in a country far away, a ship carrying a strange animal called an “elephant” sailed into the harbor.

You may have heard this tale before: Long ago, in a country far away, a ship carrying a strange animal called an “elephant” sailed into the harbor.

As no one in that country had ever seen or heard of an elephant before, the king sent some of his oldest and wisest advisers to find out what sort of beast an elephant might be.

As it happened, the advisers, being so very old, were also nearly blind. One of them reached out, touched the elephant’s trunk, and imagined an elephant must be much like a very large snake. Another, touching its leg, said the animal must be tall and strong, like the trunk of a tree. None of the advisers could see the big picture.

Something like that is happening to the elephants at New York state zoos, including Rochester’s Seneca Park Zoo.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has noticed that elephants are an endangered species, which means they must be protected from people, and people must be protected from elephants. The DEC is missing the big picture, too.

“No visitor contact with the elephants,” the DEC ordered. That effectively shuts down zoos’ educational programs that allow visitors to approach the animals, pet them and get to know them far better than they would ever be able to just from peering at them inside their enclosures.

The DEC originally intended the rule to stop groups offering elephant rides at carnivals and circuses, where they are often mistreated. Later it extended the rule to include zoos. The DEC has been unable to cite even one instance of anyone being injured by an elephant in one of the zoos’ programs, though it does cite an attack by a tiger on several youths in California several months ago. Elephants are “still wild animals,” a spokeswoman said.

That is a bit of stretch. The youths had apparently been teasing the tiger, provoking the attack.

Last year my wife, Diane, and I learned a little about elephants at the Maesa Elephant Camp in northwestern Thailand.

Maesa still schools domesticated elephants for logging and farming, though the need for the animals is fast disappearing. Most of the work Maesa does now is involved with Thailand’s programs to protect wild elephants and the forests in which they live.

For tourists, Maesa offers a variety of classes about elephants, including some two- and three-week sessions. We took only the one-day course, but it was enough to instill in us a deep appreciation of the power, grace and intelligence of these extraordinary animals.

Early in the day, before we had been properly introduced to the elephants, Diane approached a baby more closely than the mother liked. She extended her trunk and gently but insistently moved Diane away.

After we had made friends with our elephants by feeding them bananas and learned a few basic commands, we climbed aboard and rode bareback down to a river, where they submerged themselves in the water while we scoured them with scrub brushes.

They were as happy as our dog, Magellan, gets when we scratch her behind her ears.

One young elephant named Wampen painted some flowers for us. Diane would dip a paintbrush in the proper color, hand it to Wampen to take in her trunk, and then move her hand around the canvas to demonstrate the shapes she wanted Wampen to paint.

The elephant faithfully reproduced what she had been shown. When the painting was finished, everyone applauded. Wampen stamped her feet and shook her head in appreciation. The painting now hangs framed in our home, and elephants hold a place in our hearts.

Some environmental purists and animals rights groups oppose programs like that. To them, they are not much better than those demeaning circus acts that force elephants to do things they would never do in the wild, like stand on their heads.

They may be correct that the best way to respect elephants is to see them roaming freely in their natural habitats. But elephant habitat in Asia and Africa is disappearing at a rate of thousands of acres every day. Since people are the elephants’ biggest problem, the best way to build support for them is to encourage such close-up and personal experiences with the animals. Around here, zoos are the best places to do that.

A kid who gets a chance to pet an elephant will never forget it. That’s the big picture. Why can’t the DEC see it?

Dan Hall is the former editorial page editor for Messenger Post Media. E-mail him at danwriting@aol.com

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